Day of the Dead

I have encountered 'Day of the Dead' or 'All Saints Day' a few times now, with mixed experiences. It's essentially a Catholic event, and was forced upon Latin American along with Catholicism when the Spanish invaded. I spent a morbid and woeful Sunday aged 16 in the graveyard outside a dusty village near to Salamanca in Spain with my Spanish exchange girl. The entire village gathered in the walled cemetery. The priest intoned for hours and my family cried next to Great Uncle Mathias' grave. It had been preceded by a couple of hours 'Santa Maria-ing' in the church and the whole thing nearly broke me. A few years later and I was in Mexico for 'Day of the Dead' - the celebratory and politically charged Mexican version of All Saints Day which incorporates the Aztec beliefs that your relatives return from the dead for the day. Kids dress as skeletons, offerings for dead relatives of their old shoes, their favourite food and drinks are placed outside each home to welcome back their dead relatives for the day. In Mexico City, the city's main square is filled with gazebos with different themes, one linking the day into highlighting childhood obesity and death caused by too many McDonald's, another on journalists killed because of their political views and investigations and this sort of thing. It's fascinating and a lot more fun than Spain.

So on to Nicaragua. A big part of the day seems to be about clearing up your relatives' gravestones. There is one cemetery for the dead people of Esteli and this is the day when all those who are still alive head down there. The cemetery is packed with families, and of course all the traders selling tortilla with shredded cabbage, fresh oranges to suck on, flowers, confetti, and oddly, sacks of sand to throw on the graves after clearing off all the overgrown grass. There were also young lads with machetes and muscles trying to make a few cordobas for those less inclined to do the clearing themselves. The tombs, which house generations of familial skeletons, ranged from the grandiose to the simple and moving, with misspelt names or back-to-front letters but lovely flowers.The poorer end of the cemetery. In the background, the names of the deceased are painted onto the concrete walls.

It was a really interesting and enjoyable communal event to go along to. Some people were obviously deep in thought, but the majority mainly seemed to be settled in for the afternoon to catch up with friends on what is a big social event in the year.

Flower sellers set up in the main square in Esteli.

Walking through town on our way to the cemetery, this friendly father also heading there, asked us if we'd like to take a photo of his trailer load of flowers and daughter because he thought it would make a nice picture.